The ninth annual Southwest Country Fest takes place in Alva this year, out at the Woods County Fairgrounds on Saturday, Aug. 25. Jerrod Niemann will headline the event; other country music performers in the show include Kenny Feidler, the Lane Haas Band, and Wade Bowen.

Tickets are $30 if you buy them online today (Friday) before midnight (visit http://www.ExtremeTix.com), or $40 if you buy them Saturday at the gate.

Gates open at 4 p.m., when folks can get some grub from food vendors like McGill's Cowhand Chuckwagon and Smok-Shak BBQ and buy beer (non-alcoholic beverages will be available from the food stands).

The concert begins with the national anthem at 6 p.m., and the music doesn't stop until about midnight.

Be sure to leave weapons at home; for everyone's safety, a security team will be checking folks' bags and boots for knives, guns and other weapons. Outside food and drinks are also not allowed.

Organizers are hoping between 1,500 and 2,000 people will come to the festival, but say they don't know quite what to expect, since this is the first year it'll be held in Alva. Regardless of attendance, weather, or the inevitable unplanned hiccups, the show will go on, rain or shine!

Local Boy Makes Good ... and Good Country Music

Multi-platinum-selling singer-songwriter Jerrod Niemann ("Lover, Lover," "Drink To That All Night," "What Do You Want," and many others) was born and raised in southern small-town Kansas – first in Harper (pop. about 1,300) and then in Liberal (pop. about 20,000). His mom's from Hooker, Oklahoma, and he has family in Alva, Enid, Stroud and Woodward. "Growing up on the border, I have a lot of connections in the Alva area," Niemann said. "I'm hoping a lot of friends and family will be out at the show; I can't wait to see everybody!"

For a country music artist, growing up around here is pretty much the best upbringing you can have, he said. "It is absolutely an advantage to be from this area," he said. "The people here – it really is the heartland. And you're a hybrid of everything, and so much that's good has filtered in, like cream risen to the top. Coming from around here, I think you can connect with everybody from New York City to Southern California."

A certain amount of multiculturalism informs Niemann's work, maybe due to this "hybrid" culture he talks of. But many of the country musicians he admires crossed borders, he said.

"Johnny Cash, Bob Wills – they're part of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame," he noted. "I heard someone calling Willie Nelson and Waylon 'not country,' but they have their own voices, their own messages and their own things to say. You have to do that with your own voice. You can either dig through the past and use somebody else's voice, or you can live in the present and use your own voice. So for me, I find it easier to .. I find it almost a comfort being outside my comfort zone. If I know it's going to sound just like everybody else out there, I don't want to write it. I want you to be on the edge of your seat" when you hear his music, he said.

From Liberal he went to Levelland, Texas, where he studied music at South Plains College. Nowadays, he serves on the school's Commercial Music Advisory Board. He broke into the music industry co-writing numerous songs with Garth Brooks, including Brooks' No. 1 hit "Good Ride Cowboy."

Late last year he released his fourth studio album, "This Ride." His previous album, "High Noon," contained the platinum-certified smash "Drink to That All Night." His debut album, "Judge Jerrod & The Hung Jury," made the New York Times list of the Top 10 Albums of 2010 and included a gold-certified Top 5 hit "What Do You Want" and platinum-certified No. 1 hit "Lover, Lover."

Niemann lives in Nashville with his wife, Morgan Petek Niemann (to whom he dedicated the song "God Made a Woman" on his current album), and his "mangy mutts," as he laughingly referred to them. He and Morgan are avid supporters of animal rescue organization Proverbs 12:10, and regularly foster animals. He also has a nonprofit organization called Free the Music USA, which collects musical instruments and gives them to children in need, and to which he's donated more than $100,000.

Music That's Straight From the Heart

Last December he took part in the annual USO Holiday tour, visiting troops in Spain, Iraq, Afghanistan and Poland, and that experience really moved him. In fact, in the concert Saturday he'll be performing a song he just wrote and recorded about those troops. It's not yet available on any CD.

"It's called 'Old Glory'," he said. "It's a-political and all heart." It was inspired by spending Christmas Day in Iraq with the U.S. troops. "So many people were showing me videos of babies and kids opening their presents, and one guy was telling me his wife was leaving him and he had to wait eight months to try to win her back. Another guy said his mom died and he couldn't get back in time to go to her funeral. I'm going to play that song this weekend" at the concert, he said.

That song, "Old Glory," is clearly close to his heart. But songs come in all kinds of ways to Niemann.

"There are no rules, for me," when it comes to writing a song, he said. "If you and I are talking and you say, 'I got friends in low places,' I might go 'Oh!' and write that down. It may start with the idea itself, the lyric, the nucleus of the song. Or, I might literally walk into the house whistling or humming something and I'll realize it's nothing" that anyone else had written, "and I'll record it on my phone and start from there. Or it might start with two friends and our cups of coffee sitting down and structurally writing a hit. But for me, the ones that mean the most is when they fly out of nowhere, 20 minutes and it's done – you've literally downloaded it from somewhere. It's weird. Something gets stuck in your head, something you've never heard before."

Inspiration comes from everywhere, he said. "Our eyes and ears are always on, and you're absorbing information very rapidly. Even smell. When I smell fresh-cut grass I think of football, and then ... you have to grab a guitar right now and you just write a song." Those moment of inspiration can be fostered, though, he said, especially by spending time with friends, doing something exciting – "anything that makes you feel different from your normal resting heart rate."